


do not go gentle

by ADreamingSongbird



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Ash Lynx Lives, Character Study, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Mentions Of Okumura Eiji, Post-Canon Fix-It, ft. a cameo from a very tired charlie dickinson, in which max and jessica find out what blanca said to ash and are collectively like WHAT the FUCK
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29018787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADreamingSongbird/pseuds/ADreamingSongbird
Summary: On a snowy winter evening, Jessica Randy sits down to talk to the man she's still in love with, despite it all. Elsewhere, a boy stumbles against the wind as he leaves the library where he thought he could sleep forever. Is it any surprise that they collide?
Relationships: Ash Lynx & Jessica Randy, Griffin Callenreese/Max Lobo (past), Max Lobo & Ash Lynx, Max Lobo/Jessica Randy
Comments: 32
Kudos: 106





	do not go gentle

**Author's Note:**

> hello i wrote this in two days bc im FILLED with family feelings.
> 
> title comes from, of course, [the famous poem by dylan thomas](https://poets.org/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night).

It’s evening, snow flurrying in the air outside against a backdrop of clouds that make the dark sky a deep pink. It hardly seems real that just this morning, she was at the airport.

Jessica sighs, blowing softly on the mug in her hands. It’s been a long day. God, it’s been a long _month._ She still can’t quite believe it’s all over, now, but it is, because Max’s damning report has been published, and Shunichi and Eiji flew home this morning, and…

She never did get to say goodbye to Ash. That brat, she thinks, and shakes her head, because even in her own mind, she can’t help but think of him fondly.

Well, tomorrow is a new day, and she’ll be in New York til the end of the week. Who knows? Maybe Ash will show up before she heads back to the West Coast, to pick Michael up from her sister Veronica’s house. It still stings, the separation from her child, but Ronnie _adores_ her nephew, so she knows he’s being well-cared-for, at least. Little rascal’s probably eaten his way through five boxes of Oreos every week.

Still. She misses him.

She sets her mug down in a tray, pushing away thoughts of both Ash and Michael for the moment, and gets Max’s mug, too, and a bowl of grapes for them to share. Grapes and hot chocolate are a strange combination, perhaps, but Max is a strange guy.

And Jessica must be a strange woman, to agree to marry him twice.

She picks up the tray and makes her way from the kitchen to the living room. Max looks up as she approaches, and something in her heart melts at the way he lights up just seeing her. It reminds her of their early romance, the days when he would show up at her door with flowers and a big goofy grin.

Oh, _Max_.

“Hey, you,” she greets softly, and sets the tray on the coffee table, then sinks down to sit next to him. His laptop is open, balanced on his leg, and she peers at the screen—he’s reading about some of the fallout after the press conference. Not surprising, given that it was only yesterday, but she tuts at him, closing the laptop. “Enough. Let yourself rest, sometimes.”

Max sighs and rubs the back of his neck. “I know, I know…”

“Here.” Jessica plucks a grape from the bowl and holds it to his lips. “Eat these. We need to finish the box before they go bad.”

Obediently, he lets her feed him. A few heartbeats pass in a companionable silence as they share the grapes, waiting on the hot chocolate to cool enough to drink. Snow flurries outside the window.

Then Max’s arm settles around her shoulders, and Jessica leans into his side, her head dropping against his shoulder. His embrace has always felt comforting beyond words. It broke her heart, when she realized hers wasn’t enough for him.

But she knows it is, now. It’s enough. She’s enough.

When she turns her head to glance up at him, he’s watching her, his gaze heavy with thought. She smiles slightly, raising an eyebrow. “What’s on your mind?”

Max lets out a soft bark of laughter and shakes his head. “Man, can I pick just one thing? All of it, really.”

“Mm.” Jessica reaches up, threads her fingers into his hair, and gently scrunches her fingers against his scalp. “Start somewhere, then. Doesn’t matter where.”

“Always pragmatic, aren’t you,” Max murmurs, and his voice is so fond she almost wants to cry. She’s missed him more than she could possibly say. And as if he knows what she’s thinking, he sighs again, and gives her a gentle squeeze against his side. “I owe you so many apologies, Jess.”

“Can it.” She would have loved to have him groveling for her forgiveness, before. Now, though, now that she’s seen everything that she’s seen, she understands. “I already forgave you.”

“Still,” Max persists, and she relents; maybe it’ll do him good to get it off his chest. “I wasn’t good to you. I was a bad husband. And you deserved better than that. And I’ll always, always be sorry for it.”

He _was_ a bad husband. Left her at home with their young son to run off hunting evidence and witnesses and god knows what, chasing a lost love taken from him too soon. There was a time when Jessica hated Griffin Callenreese, for taking Max’s heart and holding onto it too hard to let her ever have the entire thing.

Max was trying to find answers for so many years, always just asking _why? why? why?_ Somehow, he never realized that that was the same question Jessica had, desperately wondering why her husband always looked in a dead man’s direction. Why? Why? Why?

“It’s okay, Max.” Jessica turns her head and stretches up a little, to kiss his cheek. He’s got a bit of stubble, the kind of thing that always used to make her wrinkle her nose, but it’s just comfortingly familiar, tonight. She’s still getting used to having his arms around her again. “You can make it up to me now. And more importantly, to Michael.”

“God. Michael. I really…” Max rubs his face with his free hand, and then winces as he accidentally presses on one of his half-healed wounds. “Ow.”

Jessica bats his hand away from his face. “Dummy. Don’t do that.”

She takes an experimental, small sip of her hot chocolate again, and it’s the right temperature, now, so she nudges Max, and he sips his, too. After a moment, she reaches up, to lay her hand over the one on her shoulder. Max’s hands are always warm.

“Michael adores you,” she murmurs, her voice soft. “He isn’t old enough to doubt you, I guess. You haven’t lost him.”

“Sometimes I really wonder at myself.” Max’s voice is tinged with regret, even as he intertwines their fingers. “I came so close to losing both of you, just because… I couldn’t handle having already lost Griff. Ironic, huh?”

Jessica considers that, tilting her head a little. “I used to think that,” she admits. “To spite you. I thought, maybe once I was gone from your life, you would miss me, too, and then you would search for me as obsessively as you searched for what happened to him. But… I don’t feel that way anymore, Max.”

Max looks at her. He looks _exhausted,_ and suddenly all she wants to do is tuck him into bed and kiss him goodnight, and watch over him until morning. He nearly died, recently, taken hostage by that absolute fucking _pig_ who brutalized Ash, and she’s still not over how close she came to losing him for good.

“What do you feel?”

Jessica laughs, her voice breathy, almost watery. She shakes her head, takes another sip to stabilize herself, and looks up at him. “I think… as much as it hurt me at the start, you were doing the right thing. I wish you’d been more honest with me, about all of it, and I wish… I wish Michael never had to see me… like that, but…”

Max quietly turns his head and presses a kiss to her hair. Fondness squeezes in her chest and makes her eyes sting all over again.

“But this… it’s a good thing you’ve done, bringing this to light.” She gestures at the laptop, closed and sitting on the table. “It’s good you helped Ash. And I don’t think I could have lived with myself, if I had somehow stopped you from saving all of the kids that these monsters would otherwise have hurt. I mean—god, part of me wonders why it had to be you, and not someone else, but… it had to be someone. So it might as well have been you.”

“Might as well, huh?” The corners of Max’s eyes crinkle when he smiles. It’s one of those little things that Jessica missed most, that smile, and she can’t help but smile back, even though she has to take her hand from his for a moment to wipe her eyes.

“Might as well,” she agrees, and laughs softly again. “I don’t know, Max, I just mean… this whole thing is so _big._ I can’t blame you for getting swept up in it for love when I ended up doing the same thing.”

“Jess…”

Max sets his mug down and turns to her, and his eyes are full of so many emotions she can’t possibly put a name to all of them. Love, sorrow, gratitude, guilt, relief, pain—

He pulls her into his arms, and she sinks against him, her arms winding around his waist. He smells familiar, and something about the fact that he still uses the same aftershave as he did when they woke up together in their marriage bed just tugs at her heart.

“I love you, too. I swear I do. I love you, and I’m so, so sorry I ever made you doubt that—”

“Oh, stupid, don’t you listen? I told you, I already forgave you!”

Jessica lightly smacks the back of his hip, more of a hard tap than even a playful smack, because she knows he’s covered in bruises and scrapes, and the last thing she wants to do, ever, is hurt him.

“I know you love me, Max. I never doubted that. I only worried you loved a ghost more than you loved your living family, but I don’t have that worry anymore, either. So you don’t need to keep feeling bad.” She rubs her hand up and down his back, and when he sighs, she feels it in the rise and fall of his chest.

“Man, Jess.” Max blows out a breath, and now it’s his turn to laugh wetly. It makes Jessica smile, drawing back enough to cradle his cheek in her hand; his eyes are a little too bright, and she strokes her thumb over his cheekbone. “What’d I ever do to deserve you, anyway?”

Jessica just shrugs and settles next to him again, smiling. “You really have to ask that?”

Max smiles back at her, shakes his head, and picks up his hot chocolate again.

They’ve set their empty mugs aside, a few minutes later, content to sit together and watch the snow fall outside. The wind is picking up, blowing the flurries this way and that, and it’s peaceful, curled up here in this warm apartment and watching winter outside. Jessica lays her head on Max’s shoulder again and thinks, _this man is going to be my husband again,_ and smiles to herself.

“Hey,” she murmurs, after several minutes. Max looks down at her, and she smiles up at him. She’s missed this closeness, this quiet intimacy between them. When’s the last time they sat together and watched the sky?

“Hey, yourself.” Max lightly tweaks her nose, and Jessica considers licking his finger, like she did years ago when they were still dating, just to listen to him squawk and complain. “What is it?”

This is something she never, ever would have asked him, before. Less out of concern for him, if she’s being honest, and more out of her own selfish need to protect her aching heart. But that time is past, and she wants to know her ex-husband and husband-to-be in full, wants to see all the broken parts and jagged lines and sharp edges that he tries to hide from the world. Not just the ones that are easy for her to look at, but _all_ of them.

So she takes Max’s hand in both of hers, traces the lines in his palm with an idle finger, and asks, “Will you tell me about Griffin?”

His eyes widen.

“You… want to know about Griff?” he repeats, as if he’s not sure he heard her right, and when she nods, he just runs a hand through his hair and blows out a deep sigh. “About Griff, huh. Well… you know the basics, right, that we served together, that we met on base, uh…”

“Not just that stuff, Max.” Jessica squeezes his hand. “What was he like? He must have been a great guy, if you loved him so much.”

At that, Max softens, and the grief in his eyes is tinged with fondness. He gives her a grateful look, and Jessica can’t help but wonder if things would have been different, if she’d asked him this before. She knows, of course she knows, that one conversation wouldn’t have saved their marriage, but maybe it would have been a start.

It doesn’t matter. They’re here, now, and that’s that.

“Griff was… he was the sweetest guy I ever knew. He never belonged out there.” Max shakes his head, and when he looks out the window again, Jessica knows he’s not seeing the snowfall. “He was real gentle. Hated hurting anyone. He was never meant for war. I asked him why enlist right outta high school, if he hated the idea of going into battle so much. You know why he joined?”

Something twists in her heart. “For Ash?”

Max nods, and her heart wrenches a little further. “For Ash. Said he wanted to be able to get through college without debt so he could afford to take care of his little brother ‘n’ become his official, legal guardian. He didn’t expect to actually get deployed. Thought he’d spend a few years on domestic soil, do his degree, get a decent job, that sorta thing. But then he didn’t have a choice.”

And then he was drugged with an experimental mind-control drug, and Max had to shoot him. Jessica knew, of course, that Max’s best friend, his first love, lost his mind out there, that Max had to take him down. But until recently, no one knew the truth of it. _Banana Fish,_ Max told her. Griffin’s last words. Banana Fish. Banana Fish. Banana Fish.

“He liked to write poetry,” Max adds. His voice is soft. “He wanted to major in English and get a job somewhere as an editor, maybe as an author or poet on the side. He had all these plans for when he got to go home.”

There’s an ache in her chest, just hearing the quiet sorrow in Max’s voice. That’s the thing about grief, isn’t it? It never leaves. It just gets easier to live with the pain, eventually. She squeezes Max’s hand and just nods, listening.

“Always had a sharp tongue and a quick wit, too. I think you would’ve liked him, if you met him. He liked to make fun of me almost as much as you do.” Max smiles a little. “He loved wordplay and witty things. He had a little book of crossword puzzles. I think it was one of the only things that kept him sane out there.”

Until it didn’t. But neither of them wants to say that part.

“He sounds like he was lovely,” Jessica murmurs, and is only slightly surprised to realize that she means it. Maybe Max has a type. The thought makes her smile, a little, and she turns her head and kisses Max’s cheek.

“He was.” Max leans into her side a little more. “Thank you. For asking. And listening. I… it means a lot to me, Jess.”

“Of course, honey.” She hasn’t called him _honey_ in a while. She likes the way it makes him smile again. “I want to listen to you better than I used to. You’re not the only one who didn’t do a good job our first time around.”

Max gives her a wan little smile in acknowledgment, and then turns his head to kiss her hair again. It makes her feel warm inside, every time he does that.

After a moment, he shakes his head. “Griff was missing, you know? He got sent home and discharged, but he never made it back to Cape Cod. Ash found him. He was alive, until… a little under a year ago.”

Jessica gasps, stunned. This is news to her. “He was?”

“Yeah.” Max doesn’t sound happy about it. “Barely. Ash said he never really came back to himself. Didn’t even recognize his own little brother, only ever mumbled the same thing. Banana Fish, Banana Fish. And then the bastard who invented it killed him.”

For a beat, Jessica is quiet. That’s a lot to process. Griffin was alive, all along, and yet he was so utterly destroyed that he couldn’t even recognize the little brother he loved enough to go to war for. The drug and the scientist and everything else… all of that falls a little short, in her mind. None of it is quite as tragic as these two brothers in the middle of it all. Every single one of them—Max, Griffin, herself, Ash—they’ve all been doing this for love, all along.

It breaks her heart.

“It’s just a sad story, isn’t it?” she murmurs, and strokes his hand. Next to her, Max nods, shoulders slumped, and her heart _aches._ “The one guy who wanted to do right by Ash, and this happens to him. And then poor Ash…”

“Shunichi had to hold me back, you know.” Max chuckles humorlessly. “When we went to Cape Cod for Griff’s things. I woulda beaten his shitty father’s face in. The idea of talking to your own _son_ like that bastard did to Ash, I… and when he told us what he said to Ash—god, Jess, Ash was barely older than Michael is now, and…”

There’s a funny feeling in the pit of Jessica’s stomach, as she sits forward a little, puts her arm around Max’s shoulders. “Wait, wait, slow down. What did he say? You only ever told me that Ash’s father is a piece of shit.”

Max’s breath leaves him in an explosive hiss. “The same year Griff was deployed, Ash’s baseball coach raped him. He was seven.”

Something in Jessica’s chest shatters. She knew Ash had a horrific past, that he’s been abused over and over, but… seven is just so _young._

_“Seven?”_ she chokes out, face pale. “And his father? What did he do?”

Max grits his teeth. “He took him to the police. The police said it couldn’t have been that coach, because everyone in town liked him, and that Ash must have been mistaken about his attacker’s identity. So his father took him back home and said to hell with it, if it happens again, just tell the guy—tell the guy to _pay him.”_

Jessica makes the mistake of imagining a child barely older than her own son, crying and alone, and nearly throws up from the horror.

“And no one helped him,” she fills in, her voice soft, horrified. “Because Griffin was away, and his father was trash. And no one came to help him. God, no _wonder_ he doesn’t trust adults, I—you know, I always wondered why he was so damn unpleasant when we first met—it was because you and I were arguing, and it upset Michael, wasn’t it?”

Max nods, sinking into her side. “He’s… really protective of kids.”

Jessica bites her lip, remembering how gentle Ash was with Michael, the night she was raped in her own home. “That…” She laughs, even though nothing is funny. “That makes me want to cry.”

Max offers her a dry, sad smile. “Me too.”

“Are you still worrying about him?” She reaches up, to guide Max’s head down to rest on her shoulder. She can hold him, now. “He emailed you to say he’s alright earlier, didn’t he?”

“He did,” Max confirms, and sighs wearily, slumping into her side. “I just don’t entirely know if I believe him. It’s not like him to let Eiji leave without saying goodbye.”

That… is a good point. As bratty as Ash was to her at times, he was always sweet to Eiji, even when they bickered and threw playful insults back and forth. Honestly, it was refreshing to see him act like a teenager. But he didn’t come to the airport today. Eiji didn’t say anything, but she knows he was heartbroken about it.

“Shunichi said he broke into the hospital, the other night. While you were still… while that man still had you.” Jessica strokes his hair again, fingers rifling gently through it. “Eiji begged Charlie to let him go.”

“Yeah. Shunichi told me, too. I… I don’t know. I don’t think Ash is in a good way right now.” Max sighs, and nearly scrubs his hand over his face again, except that Jessica catches his wrist this time.

“Don’t you have his number or anything? I’m sure he’d appreciate it if you reached out.” She lets go of his wrist to go back to stroking his hair, and Max just hums in her arms, shaking his head.

“I could text him, but I don’t know if he’d believe me enough to even respond, if he’s so stuck in his head he wouldn’t even go see Eiji. He’s…”

“Why didn’t he go in the ambulance?” Jessica asks, abruptly. She’s been wondering this for several days, turning it over and over in her mind, but she can’t puzzle it out. “He wanted to go, with Eiji. I don’t know why he didn’t, when I did.”

“Maybe he thought he’d get arrested or something?” Max is already shaking his head even as he says it. “No, that’s bullshit. He wouldn’t have let that stop him from being with Eiji. I don’t know what could have. Besides, ‘Ash Lynx’ is legally dead at this point. What are they gonna do, prosecute a living man for a dead guy’s crimes?”

“I don’t know!” Jessica shakes her head. “I don’t know why he didn’t come along. At the time I didn’t even realize he wasn’t there until we were halfway to the hospital already, I was just so focused on Eiji…”

“Understandably,” Max points out, and pats her knee. “Not your fault, whatever it was. Maybe I can ask him about it. Would be great if he’d talk about it. I don’t like this distance he’s been keeping.”

“Tell him Michael misses him,” Jessica suggests, only half-kidding. “Maybe that’ll make him respond.”

“Maybe,” Max says, and chuckles. “That would be a sight.”

Another silence falls, companionable and comfortable. Jessica strokes through Max’s hair and thinks, not for the first time, that she is so, _so_ lucky to have gotten a second chance with him.

Outside, the snowfall gets heavier, and the wind buffets it this way and that. There’s already a little icicle forming on the top of the window, just a tiny frozen drip that’ll be a pain in the ass if they were try to open the window later. She watches it, thinking, as the snow keeps falling outside, until Max nearly dozes off in her arms.

And then the doorbell rings.

“Huh?” Max lifts his head, blinking groggily. “Who’s it?”

“Probably one of the neighbors or something,” Jessica says, extricating herself gently from him. “You stay here. I’ll go get it.”

The doorbell rings again, and she rolls her eyes. Someone’s impatient.

“Wait—what if it’s something dangerous?” Max stands up, too. “It might be related to all the fallout from everything, and—”

“If it’s dangerous, then _you’re_ already injured as well as most likely to be a target, so you should be the one to hang back,” Jessica retorts. “Besides—”

_Ding-dong!_

Okay, seriously. She rolls her eyes again. “I’m pretty sure it’s some dumb teenager pulling a prank.”

She pulls on her coat before she goes to the door—it’s windy and cold and snowy out there!—and in the time that takes, the doorbell rings _again._ It’s a little bit ridiculous.

“I’m coming!” she calls at the door, resisting the urge to roll her eyes again, and steps forward—

_Thump._

She stops.

_Something_ heavy just fell against the door. She’s not sure if it was someone hitting the door, or what, but apprehension fills her, and she steals over and peeks through the peephole, but she can’t see anyone there, and…

“Max?” she calls, wary, just to be on the safe side. “I’m not sure what’s out there, but…”

Max appears in the doorway from the sitting room, holding a folded camera tripod. A crude, but potentially effective, blunt force instrument, she supposes. “Go on,” he says, voice low. “You stay behind the door and let me handle it.”

Ugh. She wants to keep _him_ safe. But he’s stubborn, and she supposes she can grab the vase on the side table and smash it over an intruder’s head if she has to, so she carefully unlocks the door, and very tentatively turns the knob, and pulls—

There’s a heavy weight against the door that makes it fall open, and something heavy and soft and wet collapses onto her, and she lets out a rather undignified squeal of alarm, falling to her knees to catch it even before she realizes it’s a person. Blond hair, white coat, black sweater—oh.

Her hand comes away from his side wet with dark, sticky, red blood. Her eyes go _wide._

“It’s Ash!”

Max is already at her side, face white with shock. He’s got more of a mind than she does, though, because he shuts the door to at least keep the cold air from freezing Ash any colder than he already is—god, he’s so pale, his sweater is soaked through with blood, there’s a red patch even on his coat, oh, god, what _happened?_

“We need to slow the bleeding—Jess, call 911, he needs an ambulance, and—fuck, cloth, we need—can you get me a towel?” Max is on his knees, his face grim. Ash isn’t conscious, but he’s still breathing, and he must have _just_ passed out! He was ringing the doorbell so insistently.

Ringing the doorbell, because he _came to them_ for help. He came here. He came to them.

(They can’t fail him.)

Jessica’s eyes are filled with tears even as she runs to get him towels, to keep pressure on the wound. They slip down her cheeks and drip from her chin as she frantically dials 911 and begs for help, because a boy who in another life could have been like a son to her is bleeding out in her husband’s arms in the front hall, and he came to them. He came to them for help, even though he’s never trusted any adults in his life, even though he couldn’t even bring himself to say goodbye to Eiji, even though—even though—

“We can’t lose him,” she cries to Max, her fingers desperately searching for a pulse in Ash’s pale neck. She finds it—it’s slower and weaker than it should be, fluttering against her fingers like his heart itself is fighting to stay alive, but it’s _there,_ and she could sob. “He came to us.”

“I know, Jess, I _know.”_ There’s blood on Max’s hands as he holds the towel hard against Ash’s side. There’s blood on her hands, too. Oh, god.

He’s lost so much blood—will he make it? Can he survive this? He’s survived so much else—what happened? Why is he here? It was all supposed to be over now! Who did this?

She can’t panic. No. Not now. That’s not what Ash needs. It’s not what Max needs, either, and god, when she looks over at him, he’s in tears, too, trying desperately to hold them back so he doesn’t accidentally hurt Ash. She wants to hold him, but the idea of moving Ash’s head from her lap and laying him on the floor again is _unthinkable._

She doesn’t know how long it takes for the ambulance to arrive. All she knows is that her fingers stay on that pulse in Ash’s neck, that weak but determined flutter that says _I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive._ Max doesn’t stop putting pressure on the wound, trying to slow the bleeding.

She could count the heartbeats, to tell the time, but each one happens in a limbo, somewhere far from the world, and all there is to hear is just the sounds of her and Max breathing, trying, trying, trying.

When the ambulance finally arrives, they move quickly, bundling Ash onto a stretcher and whisking him away. Jessica wants to cry out at the loss—she can’t feel his pulse under her fingers anymore, can’t see his chest rise and fall; what if—what if?

The paramedics tell them only one of them can ride with Ash. It makes sense, because he’s in critical condition and having both Max and Jessica there might impede the paramedics in their work, but it still stings, as they stand in the cold watching the red lights flash and flash. They need to make their choice now.

“You go,” Jessica tells Max, because it might be a choice, but at the same time, it isn’t really a _choice_ , and besides, she just had this experience with Eiji. “I’ll drive over and meet you at the waiting room.”

Max is torn for a second, his eyes filled with tears, his brow knit, his jaw set. And then he hugs her _tight_ and nods without a word, and then he’s gone.

Jessica watches the flashing lights recede, feeling empty inside, and stands on the frigid sidewalk outside the apartment complex until even the siren has faded into background city noise. It’s still snowing, but she doesn’t even feel the icy water melting into her hair. Her hands are sticky with blood.

Pragmatism, she tells herself. Isn’t that always what Max praises her for? She should be pragmatic. She can cry about it later. That’s what the waiting room is for.

Okay. First things first. She goes back up the stairs, every step bringing her closer to the blood in the doorway, and tries to ignore the dread that that thought dredges up. She needs to wash her hands. That’s the first thing to do.

Oh.

That’s… Jessica didn’t notice that, before.

There’s a bloody handprint over the doorbell. Like he just slapped at it, clumsy and desperate, before he collapsed.

She’s going to scream. She’s going to scream and she’s going to sob and she’s going to tear all of her hair out, because this boy, this stupid bratty infuriating boy, he took care of her son after the most horrible day of both of their lives, and he even tried to console her in his own way, once, when she felt shaky thinking of that man in her home, and then he said that if it took him months to recover from being raped, he’d be _dead—_ and he can’t die.

He can’t die now. He _can’t._ Not when she’s just growing genuinely fond of him, not when she’s been thinking of how sweet he is with her son, not when—not when—

Max thinks of him as almost another son already. She wanted to—she wanted to join Max in that, wanted to take in this boy that the world failed so thoroughly, and he _can’t die now._

She stares at the blood on the doorbell, and the wind blows right through her. Is she that hollow?

She steps over the blood in the doorway and goes to wash her hands. Better to clean everything up before she and Max come home later. Seeing the blood again will only make things harder on Max.

There’s a special kind of agony in cleaning, she realizes, as she numbly wipes the blood from the floor with a rag. If Ash dies tonight, there will have been something horrible about the act of cleaning his blood from the floor, of rinsing this rag and washing his lifeblood down the drain. As if she’s killing him all over again, before she even knows if he died.

She tries not to think about it.

When she’s done, she closes her eyes as the tinted water from the rag flows down the drain for the last time, and then throws it into the laundry. She doesn’t want to look at it. Then she changes out of her bloodied clothes, takes a change of clothes for Max in a backpack, and leaves.

He can’t die. He has to live. What will they tell Eiji?

When she gets to the hospital, Max is in the waiting room; she nearly throws herself into his arms the second she sees him, but his clothes are still stained in Ash’s blood, and she balks. At least he’s washed his hands.

“How is he?” she asks, cupping Max’s cheek, and Max’s shoulders slump, and for a terrifying moment, she fears the worst.

“He’s in surgery,” Max answers, and the relief is so poignant Jessica is nearly dizzy. “They don’t know if he’ll make it. He lost a lot of blood. We’re still waiting.”

They don’t know.

“He’ll make it,” she assures, with a confidence she doesn’t feel. “He’s a trooper. He’ll make it.”

Max closes his eyes. He looks _exhausted._ “I hope so.”

“Here.” Jessica pulls the clean clothes from her bag, and presses them into his hand. “Go get changed. It’ll help, at least a little.”

Surprised, Max looks down at the clothes, and then he nods. “Thank you,” he murmurs, and he doesn’t kiss her, but the look in his eyes is so tender that he may as well have. He turns away and goes to the restroom to change, and she sits down to wait.

They wait.

And wait.

And wait.

It’s the middle of the night when the news finally comes, that Ash is out of surgery, he’s stable, and he’s resting until he wakes up from his anesthesia. Max is asleep, his head in Jessica’s lap as he lies awkwardly curled up across two waiting room chairs, but he wakes the second she nudges him, his eyes wide and bloodshot. It isn’t exactly a surprise that he didn’t sleep well, but it still makes her heart ache.

But he’s _alive._ Ash is alive.

“Can we go sit with him to be there, when he wakes up?” Max asks, desperately hopeful in a way that makes Jessica want to hold him.

The nurse, however, shakes her head _no_. “Sorry, no, not both of you, and not yet. He’s in the post-anesthesia care unit right now, and we need some more time to get him settled before visitors are allowed back there. When we do take visitors, it’s only one, and for five minutes. When he’s moved back to the general ward for the rest of the night, though, you can see him. I’m sorry for the extra wait; I know this is frightening and frustrating, but I promise that he’s getting the best care we can give him.”

Max looks unsatisfied, like he wants to argue; Jessica steps in before he can. “Alright. Thank you for the update. We’ll wait a little longer.”

“He hates being sedated, Jess,” Max mutters, as they walk back to their seats. “He’s going to wake up and panic.”

There really is no good answer to that, but Jessica searches for one anyway. “He chose to come to us for help. He must have known we’d have to get him to a hospital. He’s a smart kid—I’m sure he expected this. Just like he must expect that we’ll be with him as soon as we can.”

Max still doesn’t look happy, but he sighs and nods, and they sit down again. The people who were on the sofa earlier have left, at least, so this time they can be a little more comfortable; with a pang, Jessica looks at her poor, exhausted husband (ex- and -to-be cancel out, more or less, don’t they?). His eyes are bloodshot and his face is drawn and tired, and she aches, seeing him like this.

“You can go in, when they let us visit.” She reaches up, to gently stroke his hair once, as they sit down again, side-by-side. “I think Ash would rather see you than me. He knows you better.”

Max leans back against the stiff cushions with a deep sigh, nodding slowly. “You’ll be alright waiting longer?”

Jessica tries to snort, but it comes out more as just a puff of breath as she shrugs. “Of course. I know he’s going to be okay. I’m fine.”

_Fine_ is a stretch. She’s still going to have nightmares about all of the blood she cleaned up. She can already see them in her mind’s eye—nightmares about the blood, and that weak, fluttering pulse. In her dreams, she’s sure it’ll fade under her fingers.

From the look on Max’s face, he knows she’s not being completely honest, but he just nods again, trusting her judgment. He should trust her judgment! If she says she can handle it, she can handle it.

Max should be the one to go sit with Ash as he wakes up. It’s the pragmatic solution. And Jessica is nothing if not pragmatic.

She sighs, leaning against the armrest and curling up into the side of the couch, even tucking her feet up next to her side like she did as a child. She browses Twitter for a few minutes, just to pass the time, but the words all blur on the screen, and nothing means anything, so she blows out a breath and and gives up, closing her eyes. Her head hurts. Maybe she’ll go get some shitty hospital coffee in a minute.

…and then suddenly Max is shaking her shoulder gently, his voice soft. “Hey, Jess, wake up. We can go in to see him. C’mon. He’s awake.”

“Huh?” Jessica lifts her head, and immediately regrets it, because _fuck,_ did sleeping all curled up like that do a number on her neck. _Ow._ “Ugh—right… when did I fall asleep? I didn’t mean to…”

Max smiles down at her, and just from his face, she knows it must have been a while ago. His shoulders are lighter than before, and the shadow in his eyes has receded. And… wait, if they can both go in to see Ash, then he must be out of the post-anesthesia care unit, which means Max already saw him, all while she was sleeping.

Really? How tired was she?

“You were out for a couple of hours. It’s five-something, now.” Max shifts his weight, smiling and smiling. Seeing Ash must have taken such a heavy burden off his shoulders. “I was surprised you didn’t wake up when I got up earlier, but I thought you must need the rest.”

“Mm.” Jessica sits up and nods, rolling her shoulders and tilting her head to the side to try and stretch out the awful crick in her neck. “How is he?”

Max’s relief is a ray of sunshine in the dark of the night. “He’s already himself, if you can believe it. Still groggy from the anesthetics and swearing up a storm about it.”

That brings back the memory of Max’s concern earlier, and even as she gets to her feet, Jessica can’t help but fret a little, too. “Were you right? Did he panic about it?”

“A little, from what the nurses mentioned, but by the time I went back there, he was awake enough to understand what was going on.” Max chuckles. “Awake enough to tell me I’m a fucking bastard for getting him stuck in a hospital bed again, too.”

Somehow, the fact that this kid swore at her husband for saving his life makes Jessica feel better. She’s not quite sure what to make of that.

“Oh! Also, while you were asleep, the nurse and I talked. She said policy requires a police report to be filed, because Ash was a victim of a battery. I called Charlie, and I think he’s handling things, but he’ll need to come get a statement from Ash at some point, now that he’s awake.” Max rubs the back of his neck.

Jessica just sighs and rubs her temples, commiserating in full. “I’m sure that’ll go well.”

Max huffs out a soft laugh at her side, and just like that, some more of the cracks in her heart seal themselves up and heal.

When they enter Ash’s hospital room, he’s propped up against a small mountain of pillows—it looks like he asked for extras, which is bizarrely cute if true—and _glaring._ His hair is a rumpled mess, sticking out in all directions, and he’s still kind of pale, but he certainly looks much more like himself than before, and the distress and fear that have had an icy grip on Jessica’s heart since she opened the door and he fell into her arms finally begin to melt away.

“Oh, great, you brought the old lady, too.” Ash folds his arms over his chest, giving both of them a dirty look. Max outright laughs, and Ash’s glare only sharpens, before it shifts to Jessica. Goodness, he really is intense when he wants to be. “Well? What do you want? Why are you here?”

“You banged on the doorbell and collapsed onto me,” Jessica answers tartly. “Do you think I wouldn’t get your ungrateful ass to the hospital after that? What even happened to you?”

“You were there?” Ash frowns. “I thought you were going back to California.”

“Eventually, yes.” Jessica rolls her eyes. “So much for you being all-informed. My flight is next week.”

“Oh.” Ash gets uncharacteristically quiet, as if something about her being here has taken the wind out of his sails, and he sighs. “I shouldn’t have come. Sorry for the trouble. You can go home now.”

“Ash. We’re not leaving until you’re discharged.” Max shakes his head. “You don’t need to say sorry for anything. I’m glad you came to us.”

“I didn’t mean to come to you, plural,” Ash mutters, and something about that stabs Jessica’s heart, just a little. She knows he’s much closer to Max than her, but…

“Why not?” She raises an eyebrow, moving a little closer to his bed, and is at least gratified that he doesn’t seem to mind. “You think I would prefer to see you bleed out somewhere on the street?”

Ash gives her another dirty look. “Wouldn’t you?”

_What?_

“Ash!” Max rebukes, standing at her side. “What’s that all about?”

“Don’t act all buddy-buddy with me.” Ash looks away. It’s strange, because the last time she saw him—the night Eiji was shot—he was much more mellow with her. “You yourself told me you never wanted to see me again.”

“That doesn’t mean I wanted you _dead!”_ Jessica bursts out, shocked. “And I—I didn’t know what I know now when I said that to you.”

And she’s the adult here, and she’s a parent, and there’s a little voice in the back of her mind always telling her she needs to be a good role model for Michael, which means she can’t just be petty or get mad that he’d really think that of her. Besides, he doesn’t trust adults to care for him. It’s not just her.

So she clears her throat and adds, softer, “But, Ash, for what it’s worth, I _am_ sorry I said that to you. It was unnecessarily cruel of me, to pin blame for any of this on you.”

Ash’s head whips back around, and he _stares_ at her for a moment, his brow furrowed as if in… confusion? What’s there to be confused about?

And then what he says next takes her heart and _shatters_ it:

“What’s your aim? Adults don’t just apologize to me for no reason.”

“Hey, hey, Ash!”

Max waves his hands as if to clear the air, and Jessica looks between him and Ash, torn, heart aching. She doesn’t know how to get through to him, not the way Max does, and she _wishes_ she did.

“Jess isn’t mad at you or trying to get something from you, I promise. She really does want to get to know you better! C’mon. What’s got you in such a mood?”

Ash’s face sours, but it’s somehow much more reassuring to see the petulant irritation than the quiet confusion. “Oh, I don’t know, how about getting fucking stabbed _again,_ and winding up in the fucking hospital with a bunch of needles and shit in my arm _again!”_

“Yeah, yeah, I know, I know.” Max laughs, and Ash glares at him, but there’s no sting in that glare, no real anger. It’s just… this kind of self-expression is what Ash knows. More genuine forms of it must frighten him. “Sorry, sorry. You just gave us a real scare, y’know.”

And somehow, that makes Ash’s face fall again, and he looks down at his hands, resting in his lap on top of the blue hospital blanket. “…Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“Hey, now, there’s no need for that!” Max tries a reassuring smile, but it doesn’t seem to reach Ash. “Like I said, I’m _glad_ you came to us, Ash. We both are.”

Ash doesn’t look convinced. Jessica purses her lips. There’s _something_ missing, something that happened to him between Eiji getting shot and now. Was it during that huge fire at the National Mental Health Institute? Was it after? Something’s made him more defensive, more dismissive, more…

“What’s wrong with you?” she demands, and then winces at how harsh that question came out. “I mean—you’re not acting like you did, before. What happened?”

Ash stares at her like she’s grown a second head. “The hell are you talking about?”

“You didn’t have your panties in a twist about what I said to you, earlier, when we went through the drive and talked at that hideout!” Jessica puts her hands on her hips. At least he’s responding, instead of brushing her off. That’s something, right? “So something must have happened to give you this big of an attitude change!”

Ash opens his mouth.

And then he closes it again.

_Ah,_ Jessica thinks. _Bingo._

“Ash?” Max asks, now concerned himself. “Did something happen? I thought it might have. I was worried when—”

“You shouldn’t waste your fucking time worrying about me!” Ash bursts out, fists clenching in the sheets. “Both of you! Fuck off and leave me the hell alone!”

Max stamps his foot insistently, like a child. “No! It’s not a waste—”

“What is this? Your leftover, residual guilt for Griff, manifesting in a need to make sure you hover over me and worry and worry when I do stupid shit? You have your own son to take care of! Better not neglect him, you don’t want him to turn out like me, do you?” Ash laughs bitterly.

Max looks stricken, as if Ash has just slapped him across the face, or thrown ice-water over his head, and Jessica has _had it._

And yet Ash keeps going. “God, I should never have gone to your place, I should have—”

That’s _enough._

“Ash!” Jessica snaps, and gives him her best frosty glare.

Unfortunately, he just meets it with one of his own, and she grudgingly has to admit that his is _good._ Not good enough to make her back down, but enough to clearly state that he’s not backing down, either.

“What should you have done?” she challenges. “Where else were you going to go?”

Ash’s glare darkens, but he doesn’t answer. It’s answer enough. He was thinking of letting himself bleed out.

And then, because he’s a fuckstupid, self-sacrificial moron, he abruptly sits up and swings his legs over the side of his bed and announces, “I’m checking myself out.”

“Ash.” Max’s voice is soft, soft in the way he usually reserves for Michael. It tugs at Jessica’s heart, the amount of love and pain she can hear just in that one word; doesn’t Ash hear it, too?

He does pause, standing there, though he doesn’t lay back down. “What.”

“At first, maybe you were right. At first, maybe I was helping you out of a sense of obligation to Griff. But that’s _not true,_ now.” Max sighs and rakes a hand through his hair. “I would be here with you, worrying about you, even if you had nothing to do with Griff. I care about _you,_ Ash. You as your own separate, individual person. Not just as Griff’s brother. And I can care about you and Michael at the same time. Love is not a finite resource.”

There’s tension in Ash’s shoulders. He still doesn’t turn around.

Maybe it’s Jessica’s turn to try getting through to him. “Ash,” she begins, her voice soft again as well. “I’ve been wondering, but I never got the chance to ask you. Why didn’t you come with Eiji, in the ambulance, that night?”

Ash chokes on a gasp as if she’s just punched him in the gut, and abruptly, his knees give out, and he sits down _hard_. Max makes a sound of distress and reaches out to support him, to help him lay back against the pillows gently, so he doesn’t hurt himself.

“I… I _tried,”_ Ash whispers, as Max tucks the blanket around him again, his brows knitted together with concern. It’s like all of the fight has gone out of him, just like that, in one question; it’s disquieting, and it frightens her. “I tried, I _swear_. I wanted to go, I…”

There are tears in Ash’s eyes. This…

This is _hurting_ him. Was this itself what changed him?

“I believe you, Ash,” Jessica murmurs, and god, it takes everything in her to stop herself from reaching over to brush his hair from his forehead, but she’s afraid that touching him without permission would only spook him again. “I believe you. What happened?”

The tears spill over, and Jessica’s heart aches. “It was my fault!” Ash cries, and shakes his head hard, eyes squeezed shut, his teeth gritted. “It was all my fault he got hurt.”

“Kid, that’s not true,” Max starts, but Jessica squeezes his hand to silence him—Ash won’t listen to him. He wasn’t there.

But she was.

“Max is right,” she says, and she can’t quite resist the maternal urge to soothe him, so she sates it by gently brushing her hand against his shoulder. He doesn’t flinch away, at least, but he doesn’t particularly lean into her either. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t ask for that to happen.”

But Ash shakes his head again, and god, he’s the utter picture of misery. It isn’t _fair,_ she thinks, angry at the world; hasn’t he suffered enough? Why must torment still find him, even after everything is over?

“I—I was selfish,” Ash whispers. “I thought I could keep him close. I thought, since he kept—every time I tried to send him home, he’d ignore me and stay, and when I told him I would stop trying to send him away he was so _happy_ and I thought I did the right thing, but—but—”

Max is silent, his lips pressed together. Jessica wonders if he’s thought about that before, too, whether he’s tried to get Eiji away to safety, or if he’s had hard conversations with Ash about it. She’ll ask him later. For now, though…

“That was his choice, Ash.” She keeps her voice gentle, settling her hand a little more firmly onto his shoulder. “He wanted to be with you. He saw the risks, he accepted the danger. To him, you were worth it. That’s not your fault. You aren’t to blame for letting Eiji choose.”

Ash shakes his head again, that same desperate little denial, but he doesn’t seem as certain this time, looking at her with wide, distressed eyes. “No, I—he _told_ me it was my fault, for being so selfish and seeking my own salvation—”

_He?_

Jessica’s voice goes flat and cold. “Who the _hell_ told you that wanting to be saved was _selfish_ of you?”

Ash blinks, as if he didn’t expect that to make her angry, and wilts. “B-Blanca.”

“Blanca?” That name… isn’t very familiar. She knows she’s heard it, but—

_“Blanca?”_ Max repeats, incredulous, and oh, there’s _fire_ in his eyes. “Wait, let me get this straight. Blanca held you back from going with Eiji and told you it was your fault he got hurt, because wanting to be saved and escape all the shit you were stuck in was somehow a selfish act?”

Ash blinks again, uncertain, and nods, slowly. “Uh… yeah?”

“The same Blanca,” and _god,_ Max sounds furious in a way Jessica hasn’t heard in a long, long time. “The _same Blanca_ who dragged you back to Golzine in chains and claimed it was good for you?”

_What._

“Wait! _That_ was Blanca?” Jessica demands again, her temper rising. “The assassin teacher? The one who _willingly_ worked for a man who he knew raped and tortured helpless _children,_ and never once lifted a finger to save you from it just because it wasn’t convenient for him, or whatever— _that’s_ the man giving you a lecture on selfishness?”

Ash is stunned silent. He stares between her and Max for several seconds, clearly trying to find a way to refute what they’re saying, but struggling. It breaks her heart that he seems to feel like he has to defend that monster of a man, but in her eyes? Any man who condones and enables a mafia don to rape children is no better than the mafia don himself.

“I… it’s not… he… he did defend me, sometimes,” Ash finally says, his voice weak.

“Sometimes isn’t good enough, Ash.” Max folds his arms over his chest, eyes dark but voice gentle. “If there’s anyone who _could_ have saved you, run away, and disappeared so thoroughly Golzine couldn’t track you down, it would have been him. He just never did. And then after you escaped, he dragged you back by blackmailing you with Eiji’s life, didn’t he?”

Ash nods, once, stiff and miserable.

Jessica gently squeezes his shoulder, trying to comfort him. This must be overwhelming; she can’t even imagine the dissonance their words must have just created in his mind.

Maybe she should just phone Eiji. He always seems to be able to get through to Ash, where no one else could.

“Ash,” she murmurs. “Is _that_ why you didn’t come to the airport to see Eiji off? You thought he got hurt because of you, and he’d be safer if you stayed away?”

It makes heartbreaking amounts of sense, given what he’s just explained. Still, when he nods again, she wants to hold him and _weep._

It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that he’s just a kid. He’s so smart and capable and confident that he projects a veneer of being older, like an independent adult.

But he _is_ just a kid. He’s only eighteen. He’s been through far too much for someone so young. And now, Jessica can’t help but wonder how much of that confident veneer is a defense mechanism, crafted by someone too used to being taken advantage of in the most horrific of ways.

“Listen, Ash.” Max steps a little closer, and reaches down to rest his hand atop Ash’s head. To Jessica’s amazement, Ash lets him. “If you don’t wanna stay here overnight, that’s fine. I won’t insist you have to. But come home with us. Please. You can stay in the spare room until you’re better.”

Ash shakes his head a little, but all of the fight has drained out of him completely. He just looks exhausted and small and sad, like a little kid. “You’ve already done too much for me. I can’t keep just making you…”

“You’re not making either of us do anything,” Jessica reminds him, as gentle as she can. “Just like Eiji chose to stay with you, we’re choosing to ask you to come home with us. It’s our choice to offer, Ash.”

That seems to have been the right thing to say. What a relief—this moment feels delicate, like walking over ice that’s just barely too thin, and a single misstep could shatter everything. But Ash seems to understand the sanctity of choices, and more than that, Jessica’s sure, he’s thinking of how it feels to have one’s choice denied and ripped away.

And then Ash _gasps_ as if shocked, his eyes flying open wide as he struggles to sit up, ignoring what must surely be pain from the stitches in his side. “I had—when I showed up, in my coat, there was—Eiji wrote me a letter, did they—did they throw it away?!”

“Hey, hey, relax, it’s okay!” Max fishes around in the pocket of his coat and pulls out an envelope. Jessica’s breath catches in her throat; it’s covered in little bloodstains, darkened to muddy-brown over the hours. “It’s right here. They found it in the ambulance.”

Ash snatches it and holds it with both hands as if it’ll disappear if he lets go, or maybe as if he will; the look on his face is just pure heartache, as he looks at the careful script on the outside. _Dear Ash._

“Eiji has some pretty handwriting, huh?” Jessica smiles, and tentatively rests her hand on Ash’s shoulder again. “I’m sure he’ll be happy if you call him, you know.”

Ash looks torn. “I shouldn’t…”

“It was his choice, Ash. He knew the risks, and he decided being with you was worth it.” Jessica squeezes his shoulder gently. “It’s your choice, too, in the end, whether you come with us, and whether you call him or not. But I think he’d be really glad, if you did.”

Ash stares at the envelope again, a thousand thoughts clearly swirling in his mind. Finally, he bites his lip and mumbles, “I’ll think about it.”

“Of course. Take your time.”

There’s a knock on the door, and all three of them look up. The nurse opens it, and then Charlie steps in, looking a bit frazzled. Poor thing must’ve gotten dragged out of bed when Max called him.

“Hey, Ash!” he greets, but with just one look, Ash is tense and unhappy again, and Jessica has a bad feeling about this. The nurse closes the door again and leaves to give them privacy, at least, before Ash can—

“Fuck off,” Ash responds.

Yeah, there it is.

Charlie sighs. “Ash, it’s either me, or some other officer. You were a victim of battery. I need to take a statement. Don’t be mad at the doctors—it’s a class-A misdemeanor if they fail to report.”

Ash scoffs. “My statement is, go give a monkey a rimjob.”

“Jeez,” Max mutters.

Charlie sighs again and rubs his temples. “I can’t _force_ you to say who did this or what happened, I know, but why are you so reticent…? You’re the victim here. Don’t you want whoever attacked you brought to justice for it?”

“Justice, my _ass._ Police don’t have fuck-all to do with justice.” Ash is still holding Eiji’s letter with both hands, but he’s glaring at Charlie over it. “Don’t give me that shit, Charlie. I don’t want _shit_ to do with legal proceedings or whatever the hell you’re gonna do if I try and press any charges. Your official statement can be that the poor, stupid whore didn’t get a good look at whoever, and doesn’t remember any details. I don’t fucking care.”

Charlie looks resigned, but nods. “Alright. If that’s what you want.”

“Hey, Charlie,” Max says, and inclines his head a little at Ash. “That other thing you and I talked about. Wanna tell him?”

Jessica frowns. “What other thing?”

Charlie blinks, and then perks up. “Right! Thanks for the reminder. Listen, Ash—the other night, you ran off before I could talk to you. You’re not… legally speaking, you’re not in any trouble right now. As far as the system is controlled, Ash Lynx is already dead. You’re off the hook for everything you were gonna get charged with under that name.”

“That wasn’t a real identity.” Ash doesn’t seem convinced. “Ash Lynx was always a pseudonym.”

Charlie nods. “It was, but there was never any official record connecting that pseudonym to your legal name. I don’t know if it’s just because Dino’s plants on the force scrubbed the records if it ever came up, or if there was just never enough of an investigation to find it. But either way, we don’t have a legal name for Ash Lynx on the books.”

Ash stares at him, clearly disbelieving. Next to Jessica, Max is grinning ear-to-ear.

“So _this_ is what you asked Charlie to look into?” Jessica murmurs to him, smiling. This is good. That’s really good to know, actually.

“Yeah.” Max’s smile fades just slightly as he adds, quiet enough just for her to hear, “I don’t want to see him have to set foot in a prison ever again.”

…Oh.

“I see,” Ash finally says, and then rolls his eyes. “Fine. Now go away. I’m fucking _tired,_ and I don’t wanna deal with a stupid _cop.”_

“Sure, sure…” Charlie sighs, but he’s smiling, despite Ash’s attitude. “So just to confirm the statement you want me to take down…”

Ash lets out an explosive sigh and flops back onto his mountain of pillows. “For _fuck’s_ sake! I don’t care! Can you just let me go home already, asshole?”

Max and Jessica exchange sudden stunned, exhilarated looks. _Home?_

“Soon, I swear!” Charlie even laughs. “My statement is that you didn’t get a good look at your attacker, that you don’t remember the incident clearly, and… I do need you to give me even just a rough location where it happened. And no, I can’t make something up.”

Ash gives him a dirty look, but says, “The corner of 41st and 5th.”

Charlie’s eyebrows shoot up as he scribbles something down, but all he says is, “Got it! Thanks, Ash. I’ll get out of your hair now. Rest up! I hope you feel better soon.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Ash mutters, and studiously glares at the wall until Charlie’s gone again.

And then it’s just the three of them again, and Max grins exuberantly at Ash. “So! Going home, huh?”

Instead of rising to the bait and giving him some sort of mouthy retort, though, Ash just flushes and ducks his head, _shy_ of all things. It’s an utterly peculiar look to see on him, and it’s bizarrely endearing, too. “…If the invitation’s still open, I mean.”

“Of course it is!” Max assures, and beams a ten-thousand-watt smile. “You’re always welcome, no matter what.”

“Yes. Always.” Jessica nods, and then to her embarrassment, she has to stifle a yawn; it’s so late it’s practically early, and when she glances at the window, the sky is suspiciously lighter than it ought to be. “Now come on. If you’re set on leaving, let’s go and get some actual sleep, unless you want this giant golden retriever to make you some coffee or something.”

“Giant golden retriever?” Max repeats, and laughs incredulously. “You haven’t called me that since we got engaged the first time!”

“Well, you’re acting like it again, so it seemed apt.” Jessica rolls her eyes, fond beyond measure.

Ash looks back and forth between them, and finally just sighs. “I want to take a fucking nap, and if you wake me up by flirting or some shit like that, I’m leaving, and I’m _not_ joking.”

“We’ll flirt very, very quietly,” Max promises, and grins.

Jessica elbows him. “Oh, shut it, you. Let’s get going. I’m tired, too.”

“You want me to drive?” Max asks, as Ash sits up again, swinging his legs over the side of the bed more carefully this time.

Jessica pins Ash with a look and reaches over to press the _call nurse_ button, to get the discharge paperwork the proper way, instead of marching out there in his hospital gown. He sighs, sits back against the pillows again, and folds his arms.

“No, that’s alright. You’re tired, too. I’ll drive.” She took a longer nap in the waiting room than he did, too, so it’s only fair. “Ash, you can sit in the front seat and lean it all the way back, if that’s easiest for you—I’d say lie in the back, but I don’t want you to get jostled too much if I have to make any sudden stops or anything.”

Ash blinks at her, as if he didn’t expect her to think this through thoroughly, or something. “Yeah, okay,” he agrees, surprisingly amiable, the way he was a few nights ago instead of a few minutes ago.

Her heart twists in her chest, again. The guilt was weighing on him that heavily?

But before they can have much more conversation, the nurse comes in, ready to attend to whatever Ash needs, and when he says he’d like to leave, she gets the doctor to try to persuade him against it. When that fails, as it obviously does, the doctor sighs and tells Max and Jessica how best to care for him, and then Ash rolls his eyes at the _discharge against medical advice_ form, and then that’s it. They’re leaving the hospital.

The sun is rising, as they step outside into the chilly winter air. Ash is bundled up in Max’s coat and a pair of sweats from the hospital gift store, and he wraps his arms around himself. Jessica looks at the sky and pauses to marvel, for just a moment.

“Look at that,” she murmurs, smiling at the way the clouds light up with streaks of pink and gold, haloed by the barely-risen sun.

“Beautiful,” Max agrees. His voice is soft.

Ash looks up at the sky for a long, long moment. The light of dawn bathes him in a strangely fitting tranquility, and Jessica finds herself studying him, all the melancholy and contemplation in his eyes, the slight upward turn to his lips. His nose is red from the cold, and yet he looks more quietly content than she’s ever seen him.

“Come on,” she finally says, and leads them to the elevator down into the parking garage. “Let’s go home.”

It fits, she thinks. It fits that the soft light of dawn is what bathes Ash right now. After all, they’re heading home together, right here, right now, at the start of a new day.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! i'm vaguely toying with the idea of adding a second chapter with ash phoning eiji and all, but i'm not sure when i'll actually do that, so i'm marking this complete for now. but i love me a good reunion, so... we'll see.
> 
> anyway maxjess good parents ash is good boy they are fambly thank you and goodnight
> 
> find me: [tumblr](https://eijispumpkin.tumblr.com/) | [twitter](https://twitter.com/songbirdrimi/)


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